guilty until proven innocent: The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975)

    Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum [DVD] = The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum; Volker Schlöndorff, screenwriter, director; Margarethe von Trotta, co-director. Criterion collection, 177 [2003]. Originally produced as a motion picture in 1975. Based on: Die Verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum, by Heinrich Böll. Performers: Willi Benninger, Angela Winkler, Mario Adorf, Heinz Bennent, Jürgen Prochnow, Karl Heinz Vosgerau.
   Summary: In the period of several days, Katharina's privacy and her honor are destroyed, first by the police who terrorize her, and then by the yellow press, which creates in her name the image of a politicized Mata Hari. Bonus features: interview with directors Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta; interview with Jost Vacano (cinematographer); excerpts from Ivo Barnabó Micheli's 1977 biographical film on Heinrich Böll (in German with English subtitles).

   Margarethe von Trotta’s and Volker Schlondorff’s 1975 classic is a cautionary tale of the human costs of sensationalist, irresponsible journalism working in concert with a fascist-minded, law-and-order state: a timid woman (her friends call her ‘the nun’) spends a romantic night with a man the authorities suspect of being a terrorist. As a result her private life is mercilessly infringed upon by both the police and the yellow press. Dating from the edgy 1970s in Germany, Katharina Blum’s half century vintage hasn’t dulled its message for our own, eerily similar, current climate. If anything the film is even more relevant today. In an interesting and ironic aside, in today’s world, concerns about domestic terrorists, at least in the U.S., focus on the radicalized right. A half century or so ago it was the extreme left that caused all the huffing and puffing, both in America and Europe.

    In any case the New German Cinema’s socially conscious gestalt is presented front and center in Katharina Blum, in which an otherwise blandly ordinary woman is made the target of vilification by a tabloid press. Among the tricks of the trade said press employs: distorting the woman’s own statements, publishing photographs that make her look guilty, and digging up supposed dirt on her through interviews (subsequently highly embroidered in print) with those close to her, including relatives, employers and an ex-husband [1].

    “is the state unable to protect you against this garbage?”

    Katherina Blum has been called ahead of its time in the trends it anticipated a half century prior. True, up to a point. But it certainly didn’t get there first: self-serving, sensation mongering media have been around, well, for a long time, perhaps most blisteringly depicted cinematically in Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole, in which an ambitious, ethically challenged (to put it generously) journalist, and not the victim, is the main character [2]. But the film that reminds me most of KB, because of the similar subject matter and era, dates from three decades and change later, and that’s The Baader Meinhof Complex, a brilliant film to be sure but somehow lacking the sharp edge of KB. This is perhaps because Katharina Blum is historically authentic – it actually dates from the era – while Baader Meinhof is retro, almost a nostalgic period piece, if you like. Moreover, Katharina Blum has a certain rough around the edges quality that contributes to its intensity and unease, as opposed to Baader Meinhof’s more polished product [3].  

  
Whatever its many aesthetic merits and few shortcomings, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum is just plain painful to watch (while the thuggish police browbeat Katharina relentlessly, I kept wondering: where’s the damned lawyer, for heaven's sake!). However, the story has its humor, if that is the word, perhaps most pointedly driven home with Kafka-like absurdity in the scene in which a bizarrely costumed police force conduct a grotesquely excessive SWAT-team like raid on the poor girl’s apartment, culminating in an insultingly invasive interrogation, which includes a strip search, by the way all done with nary a search warrant in sight. Indeed the police antics, brutal and heavy-handed as they are, sometimes seem more Gilbert & Sullivan than Gestapo or Stasi.

    Indeed, most of the violence done to Katharina is not physical but rather psychological and emotional, and arguably not done by the police as much as the tabloid press. In an ironic twist it is Katharina who commits more physical violence than her tormenters ever inflict upon her. Somehow I couldn’t help thinking of the case of actress Jean Seberg. Hounded by her own government, along with an acquiescent press that helped spread innuendo, gossip and outright lies, Seberg, like Katharina, had few friends among the powerful she could call on. Alas, she eventually resorted to suicide. Mirroring Seberg, Katharina resorts to a kind of metaphorical suicide. 
 
    To tell their story Von Trotta and Schlondorff have opted for natural settings – drab workplaces, nondescript domestic interiors, unromanticized outdoor scenes. It all contributes to the you-are-there, slice of life feel reminiscent of the American independent films of the era. At the same time cameraman Jost Vacano favors harsh, flat lighting and spartan geometric forms that suggest an authoritarian vibe more akin to East Germany than West.

   Indeed, in the difficult-to-take, Orwellian epilogue, we could be forgiven for suspecting that the vulgar, self-congratulatory pean rendered by – and for – the socio-economic power elite is a scene stage managed in the evil GDR and not the virtuous, democratic-minded Federal Republic. Corporate controlled media, then and now, relies on the sanctity of 'freedom of the press,' however extreme its manifestations, to justify its dependence on a mass audience to sustain its large profits. (Although the analogy may not be perfect, the similarity to the sanctimonious cries of ‘free speech’ of more recent times can hardly be missed). 

    Still, the filmmakers are to be praised for injecting a certain ambiguity into a story operating from such a moral and emotional stacked deck. The extent of Katharina’s initial culpability is left unanswered, as is the criminal guilt of Ludwig, or for that matter, how he managed to escape from her apartment building. Likewise, their eventual fates are left open-ended.

    Ultimately Katharina Blum is a sober reminder that, even in ostensibly free societies, a citizen’s rights are not absolute or inalienable: rights that can arbitrarily be taken away by the state or infringed upon by an all-seeing media aren’t rights at all, but only temporary privileges.

   [1] In the film’s sleaziest scene, the tabloid paper’s star reporter sneaks into a hospital’s intensive care unit and tries to extract information from Katharina’s seriously ill mother. She tells him nothing but he later spuriously quotes her in print. She dies soon after. The shock of the reporter’s visit may well have tipped her over.
   [2]  There’s also La Dolce Vita, in which an ethically indifferent journalist and his cadre of photographers dig up scandal on Rome’s beautiful people. LDV shares with KB a certain postmodern cynicism amidst the backdrop of media corruption, but the context is different: the earlier work concerns itself with the culture of celebrity, the jaded rich, and Old World decadence, while Katharina Blum has much more of a political edge. Contemporary, quintessentially paranoic, even existential in its uncompromising, take-no-prisoners attitude, Katharina Blum is actually closer in tone and spirit to Ace in the Hole than Dolce Vita.  
   [3] When the DVD of KB came out two decades or so ago most of the comparisons were, understandably if rather facilely, to the 9/11 attacks and the resultant paranoia in the U.S. Heavy handed government intrusions on individual liberties were buttressed by a compliant media and its uncritical acceptance of the war-on-terror meme, the ultimate result being that all news outlets, the vast majority anyway, were little more than cheerleaders of official policy. Two decades later a similar paranoia set in with the Covid 19 virus and the resultant, some might say inevitable, politicization of the situation, especially in the highly polarized U.S., where recriminations and counter-recriminations flew fast and furious, and to some extent still do.

thoughts on 'greatest movies,' and a top ten

    As a matter of principle I’m against these lists, for many reasons, first among them being: it’s impossible to choose the greatest movies of all time, much less the single 'greatest movie' of all time. How do we define ‘great,’ and do we all agree on the definition? More on this below. Moreover, where does ‘greatest’ end and ‘favorites’ begin? And as much as I look askance at the BFI/S&S poll, I like their definition of greatness in a movie and indeed will apply their yardstick to my own very subjective choices. Their voters are asked to interpret ‘greatest’ as they chose: to reflect the film’s importance in cinematic history, its aesthetic achievement, or perhaps its personal impact in their own life and their view of cinema.

    Anyhow since BFI and Sight & Sound will never ask my opinion, and considering I’ve already made a precedent with posts on somewhat related topics (little known movies, greatest cinematic geniuses, and best art movies), here are my thoughts and my ‘Top 10’.

    The biggest frustration is choosing only ten titles. And yes, it pains me to leave out certain films, directors, too: you won’t find anything by Kurosawa, Godard, Fassbinder, Antonioni, or Bergman. So be it. A list of 10 is a list of 10 (even if I fudge the matter and have two ties, so this is, strictly speaking, a list of twelve). I demur from including an honorable mention section. On the other hand, some big names do make the cut, ergo there’s one title each by Hitchcock and Welles, though the choice of Touch of Evil instead of Kane or Ambersons may raise eyebrows [1]. But the truth is, at this level, individual films are pretty much interchangeable: to wit, why Kiss Me Deadly and not Out of the Past; why Carnival of Souls and not The Seventh Victim or Night of the Living Dead; why Dementia and not Meshes of the Afternoon? In any event, here goes, more or less in chronological order:

 

Trouble in Paradise

tie: Kiss Me Deadly

     Sunset Boulevard

Dementia/Daughter of Horror

Touch of Evil

Vertigo

Deux Hommes dans Manhattan

La Dolce Vita

Last Year at Marienbad

Carnival of Souls

tie: Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

     A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

 

     Comments: it’s pretty obvious that I favor black and white films released in, or around, the 1950s, also that I tend to go with B movies, quirky oddities, and genre films over big-budget Hollywood blockbusters. Guilty on all counts. Of course I could just as easily replace these ten with another ten, and another, and they would be just as representative of ‘greatness’, as well as honest choices in representing my opinion. Echoing what I’ve written above, at this level – the top 100 or so, give or take a few dozen – the ‘greatest’ movies are more or less interchangeable. Not to belabor the point, but for example, I could choose all color movies and all-Euro directors and be just as valid in my combination of the subjective with the canonically great. The films might be the likes of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Death in Venice, Juliet of the Spirits, Lola Montes, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Cries and Whispers, The Red Shoes, and, well, you get the idea.

 

[1] Perhaps my selecting Touch of Evil is my modest protest that the film was bumped from BFI’s Top 250 this time around, though Kane and Ambersons still made the grade, placing 3 and tied 169 respectively. Speaking of Orson Welles, it occurs to me that for the greatest movies of all time I could choose ten Orson Welles movies and not be that far off the mark. Oh well, plus ça change ...

"this is my happening ..." : Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)

     Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Motion picture); a Russ Meyer production; screenplay by Roger Ebert; story by Roger Ebert and Russ Meyer; produced and directed by Russ Meyer; music, Stu Phillips; director of photography, Fred J. Koenekamp; art directors, Jack Martin Smith, Arthur Lonergan; editors, Dann Cahn, Dick Wormell. Produced and released by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation. Two-DVD special edition; widescreen. New York, N.Y.: The Criterion Collection, 2016. Originally released as a motion picture in 1970.
    "The film ... is not a sequel to Valley of the Dolls. It does ... deal with the oft-times nightmare world of show business in a different time and place."  
    Performers: Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Marcia McBroom, John LaZar, Michael Blodgett, David Gurian, Edy Williams, Erica Gavin, Phyllis Davis, Henry Rowland, Harrison Page, Duncan McLeod, Jim Iglehart, Haji, Charles Napier, and the Strawberry Alarm Clock.
    Summary: "In 1970, Twentieth Century-Fox, impressed by the visual zing that 'King of the Nudies' Russ Meyer had been bringing to bargain-basement exploitation fare, handed the director a studio budget and the title to one of its biggest hits, Valley of the Dolls. With a satirical screenplay by Roger Ebert, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls follows three young female rockers going Hollywood, in hell-bent Sixties style, under the spell of a flamboyant producer, whose decadent bashes showcase Meyer's trademark libidinal exuberance. Transgressive and outrageous, this big-studio version of a debaucherous midnight movie is an addictively entertaining romp from one of the movies' great outsider artists" - Container.

 
    My first Russ Meyer movie: I remember it well. No, it wasn’t Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, but no worries, we’ll get to it. Anyhow, being a fresh-faced first semester freshman at our small-town university back in the day, some friends and I thought it would be fun – and definitely naughty – to go see such forbidden fruit as a nudie movie. The film was Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers [1], apparently not one of Meyer’s more memorable efforts but immensely entertaining, at least I thought so. The film played in a mainstream theater on the main street in town, as did the next film in the Meyer pantheon, the much more famous, and better, Vixen, starring Erica Gavin. Of course I also made it a point to check out Vixen. Aside: at about this time I also took in Gone with the Wind, maybe at the same theater (I hope so; the irony appeals to me). I’d never seen GWTW before and it was then in the midst of revival screenings. Impressive it was, certainly for its era, but the Meyer flicks made more of an impression. Today, at the risk of being heretical, I’d say Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is straight up a better movie than Gone with the Wind. But I begin to digress. In any event, when I first heard that the title of Meyer’s then-newest, ultimate opus was going to be Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, I thought, you gotta’ be kidding me. Curiously, the specifics of my catching Dolls are much less precise in the memory (the release date was July 1970). The venue may have been a drive-in, maybe a theater. The explanation must be that so much had happened in the world and in my own life in the intervening couple of years that it just didn’t register as much. Even the content of the movie didn’t stand out in the memory, and thus I can only recall a few details from that initial viewing: Ronnie Z-Man’s big reveal, Michael Blodgett's leopard spotted trunks, the beheading, Edy Williams, that’s about all. I’d even forgotten that it was (sort of) a musical.

     Now, a half century later, I just caught Dolls again, and call it nostalgia, sentiment, whatever, I absolutely loved it, so much so that I saw the film two times, four actually if you count the two commentary tracks. What they say about the film is true: it ages like fine wine. Indeed, time has been kind to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Perhaps the explanation is its very obviousness and lack of guile. For all the nudity, colorful language, sexual situations, and occasional shocking violence, Dolls has an innocence, warmth and optimism, which, along with its high gloss look, is still appealing and endearing, thus allowing the film to transcend its, frequently sordid, subject matter. Meyer is to be further commended because he, like my own parents, was of the prior, WW2 generation that, to say the least, simply didn’t relate to the Summer of Love, anti-war protests, the drug scene, rock music, and everything else going on in the 1960s, and were more often than not mystified, even revolted, by it. Thus it's to Meyer’s credit, albeit with script writer Ebert’s vital contribution, that he got it right on so many of the cultural references of ca. 1969 [2], even granting it’s all done in the context of satire.

       As for Dolls itself, the principals give it their all, and they actually add, shall we say, authenticity to the mix in that most aren’t professional actors, but nonetheless do quite well in their roles. Their exuberance, and a lot of the innocence, carries over onto the DVD commentary by five of the actors (Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Harrison Page, John LaZar, and Erica Gavin), who are having a great time reminiscing and adding their own little touches of history and trivia. By the way Roger Ebert’s more cerebral commentary track is equally engaging, providing much film industry detail and lots on director Meyer.

    Two minor criticisms of Dolls: there may be one song sequence too many, and the final pious epilogue seems out of place in such a seat-of-the-pants, wild ride production. But why bother with such (relative) trifles amongst the manifest mountain of riches.

    Beyond the Valley of the Dolls will always, I suppose, polarize fans (and non-fans), a movie that people either love or hate, consider it a kind of masterpiece or a candidate for the worst movies of all time hall of fame. Well, for better or worse, I fall into the love category. I don’t know if I’d anoint it a masterpiece, though it may be Meyer’s masterpiece. And whatever one might think of the film’s desultory, Felliniesque content, from a purely technical standpoint it’s absolutely first rate, and it just plain looks great (sounds great, too) in Criterion’s all-the-trimmings 2-DVD release [3]. The film then is sui generis; nothing quite like it has ever been put on the screen, before or since, and it’s been creeping up in critical esteem over the years [4].
   More important, the film is an eloquent valedictory coda to all that was right, and wrong, with the Sixties, as well as a meditation on the energetic recklessness of youth and the joy of living in that wild, wonderful, sometimes irresponsible time, gone forever it would seem. But not so fast, my friend. Even today, a half century and change later, as one of seventy something years, I nonetheless sense a sliver of the spirit of Dolls that remains in the nether regions of the psyche. In our very different world today, Dolls's message of compassion, tolerance, freedom, social justice, inclusion, pacifism, and respect for the environment - and each other - still resonates. In its outrageously wacky way, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is still modern, more than a little wise, and, perhaps most important, it says something to us about, life, love and the human condition that’s both timely and timeless.

style ****
substance ****


    [1] There’s one scene in Finders Keepers in which a guy is having a steamy phone conversation with the object of his desire as Chopin wafts in the background. Pretty heady stuff – a touch of class in a skin flick.

    [2] As one who lived during the anything goes era of the late Sixties, in my opinion Dolls is not that exaggerated in the various tableaux depicted and the use of hippy/youth slang. To wit: your humble writerly servant indeed attended some of the - wild or otherwise - counter-culture parties and 'happenings' of the era (some even freaked me out). More to the point, the film actually captures the zeitgeist pretty well, however flawed, or excessive, some of the details might be. In a word, it got the spirit right.

   [3] The Criterion version includes a bevy of special features, including the above-mentioned commentary tracks; the making-of short, "Above, Beneath and Beyond the Valley: The Making of a Musical-Horror-Sex-Comedy;" episode from 1988 of The 'Incredibly Strange Film Show' on director Russ Meyer, and others. But my favorites are the extended interview with John Waters in which he talks about his association with Meyer and offers a brief overview of Meyer's career; and the very sweet "Casey & Roxanne: The Love Scene", in which Cynthia Myers and Erica Gavin look back three and a half decades later at their lesbian scenes in the film.
     Aside: I always preferred that actors sing their own songs, and I labored under the illusion that the women in the rock group actually sang their own material. Alas, I later found out to the contrary, though the lip synching is pretty darn good. In any case apparently the women just didn’t have the voices to convincingly put over the tunes.

      [4] One measure of Dolls’ growing critical acceptance is that it received two votes in the 2012 BFI/Sight & Sound poll of the greatest movies of all time.* While two votes might qualify as a low-level honorable mention at best, it’s better than no acknowledgement at all. The film is also beginning to show up on directors’ and cineaste’s best films lists.
    Aside: it's curious that the fiftieth anniversary of Dolls in 2020 went largely unheralded. Searches online and elsewhere yielded a paucity of results as to think pieces or public events. Part of the explanation of the lack of Golden Anniversary gala events may have been due to bad timing: this was the first year of the Covid virus.  

   * Sight & Sound/BFI has a relatively simple and, at least in theory, equitable method of ranking the films. For the 2022 poll, each critic of the 1,639 total critics polled was asked to submit his/her own top ten choices. Each film that gets a vote gets a point, the points are tallied at the end and the films ranked by the number of points.
     By the way in case one wonders why I reference 2012 in fn4 above and not 2022, the explanation is that, as of the writing of this post, I’ve been unable to locate a comprehensive list of films that received at least one vote in the 2022 poll.
     [Update, 13 May 2024: While it took some digging, I was able to verify that in the 2022 poll Dolls received four votes, again a low level honorable mention of the four thousand-odd titles that received at least one vote. It should be mentioned that the information I found combined both the critics' and directors' polls, thus if we fudge the numbers four votes might be considered roughly analogous to the two votes it received last time around (2012). Also of interest is that two other Meyer productions, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (4 votes) and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens (1 vote) were listed, all of which is signaling a measure of respectability for Meyer as a director of substance.]

                                                                                            

brief candles: Jean Seberg (1938-1979)

   From the Journals of Jean Seberg [videorecording (DVD)]; directed by Mark Rappaport. New York, NY: Kino Classics, 2022. Originally released as a motion picture in 1995. Performers: Mary Beth Hurt, Jean Seberg. Bonus features: Becoming Anita Ekberg; Debra Paget, For Example; Anna/Nana/Nana/Anna.
   Summary: an illuminating exploration of legendary actress Jean Seberg. Mary Beth Hurt portrays Seberg, who reflects on her life as illustrated through her work. It follows her as she is plucked from obscurity to star in Otto Preminger's Saint Joan (1957), to the critical drubbing that followed, her resurrection as a star in Godard's Breathless (1960), the mostly mediocre movies that followed in the 1960s and 1970s, through to her death, probably by suicide, in 1979. A revelatory interrogation of film history, and women's place in it, that examines Seberg’s involvement with the Black Panther Movement and her targeting by the FBI, while also touching on the careers of Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, and Clint Eastwood.
 

    Only vaguely do I remember first hearing about Jean Seberg. A long time ago it was, four decades or so to be exact. As I recall my source was a news item around the time of her death. I didn’t know who she was but the story said she was an actress and there was some kind of connection to the FBI, or was it the CIA? Immediately my curiosity kicked in. Not so surprising given the historical context: these were the immediate post-Watergate years, when anything even resembling conspiracies got hot press. In any case a whiff of skulduggery floated in the ether. Later I learned she was an American actress who spent much of her career in France, and that her signal contribution to the movies was being an important figure in the Nouvelle Vague movement that was all the rage in the early Sixties, and still is with some critics and connoisseurs. Still, I knew I had to learn more about this lady, and what’s more, investigate her signature movie, Breathless (more about Breathless later).   
    But as the fellow said, I begin to digress. I’m not sure what there is about Jean Seberg that haunts the memory and makes her such a cult figure [1]. Certainly there have been movie stars and famous persons in other walks of life who died young and haven’t cast anywhere near as long a shadow or have such a mystique. But, and for whatever reason, Seberg is special. Indeed she is nudging for a place in the pop culture pantheon of brief candles, alongside the likes of James Dean, Jean Harlow, Jim Morrison, Marilyn, those whose untimely demise, combined with their dramatic private lives (and sometimes dramatic deaths), stir the imagination. To be sure, in comparison with the above-mentioned luminaries, Seberg is still more of a niche cult figure, if I may be forgiven the redundancy of using ‘niche’ and ‘cult’ in the same sentence.
    And yet, much as I’m an admirer of Seberg’s acting and her courageous stands on issues, not at all fashionable at the time (at least with certain official sources), I count myself a bit of a contrarian, i.e. a (non)admirer of her most famous role, that of the gamine journalist and Jean-Paul Belmondo girlfriend in Breathless. Or to be more precise, not an admirer of the film itself. Actually I think she’s pretty good in it. Historically important, check. Hand-held camera, check. Made Seberg, Belmondo and Godard international stars, check. Heralded the New Wave movement, check. But far more to the point, is it any good? Maybe I’m just not hip enough to appreciate Breathless’s apparent charms, but I’m with those who don’t see a lot of intrinsic value in the movie. Euro arthouse films that came out at about the same time and are much superior, in my opinion, include: La Dolce Vita, Last Year at Marienbad, La Notte, 81/2, Elevator to the Gallows, and L’Avventura, to cite just a few notable examples. For me Breathless simply hasn’t held up very well over time. Revered as a classic today, who can predict how Breathless will be viewed in, say, thirty years? As is always the case, history will be the final judge. 
    
    With her edgy, matter-of-fact delivery of director Mark Rappaport’s brittle script for From the Journals, Mary Beth Hurt eloquently captures the nuances of an older, wiser Seberg. Her incisive portrayal indeed rings true. By the way, a curious coincidence is that, like Seberg herself, Mary Beth Hurt grew up in Marshalltown, Iowa.

    A word about the title: actually there aren’t any ‘journals of Jean Seberg.’ This is strictly a fictionalized memoir. But like mythology, the basic message is based on a kernel, sometimes a large kernel, of truth. Still, the reality is that Jean Seberg kept no diary, left us no scandalous autobiography, and didn’t live long enough to star in horror films in the twilight of her career, or appear at fan conventions to hand out autographed glossies. However, in fairness it seems she was, relatively speaking, a willing and forthcoming interview subject.  
    In summary, From the Journals of Jean Seberg is a fascinating, illuminating, occasionally frustrating exploration of one of the most tragically compelling figures in cinema’s checkered history, and probably captures the real woman as well as any depiction is likely to do [2]. On balance a sympathetic portrait of its subject, From the Journals nonetheless has a sharp edge that pulls few punches: the film industry, the culture of celebrity, and political persecution all receive their share of criticism. Considering Jean Seberg was hounded to suicide by her own government [3], seldom given the roles to showcase her talent [4], and had a knack for picking the wrong husbands, both onscreen and off, she had a right to be cranky, even from beyond the grave.

    [1] At last count there were eight biographies, as well as various online tributes, fan pages and exposés. And, for the moment anyway, Breathless's place in the cinematic pantheon seems secure.
    [2] I confess I haven’t seen the much more recent and much praised straight on documentary Jean Seberg: Actress, Activist, Icon, or the recent feature Seberg starring Kristen Stewart. 
    [3] Her death was officially ruled a probable suicide but there remain lingering suspicions of the possibility of foul play.
    [4] It’s a further measure of the existential unfairness of the universe that Jean Seberg’s best performance was as the schizophrenic mental patient in Lilith, a film that bombed at the box office and languishes in obscurity today, while the aesthetically dubious (to put it generously) Airport was her biggest hit, though hers was a small part. The final icing on the cake insult is that Birds in Peru, probably her worst film, today enjoys minor cult status, in large part because of its continuing lack of availability, in any format.

Gothic noir: Cry Wolf (1947)

    Cry Wolf (motion picture: 1947). Henry Blanke, producer; directed by Peter Godfrey; screenplay by Catherine Turney. United States, Warner Bros. Pictures Inc., 1947. Warner Home Video, 2010. From the novel by Marjorie Carleton. Art director, Carl Jules Weyl; music, Franz Waxman; musical director, Leo F. Forbstein; cameraman, Carl Guthrie; editor, Folmer Blangsted.
    Performers: Barbara Stanwyck (Sandra Marshall); Errol Flynn (Mark Caldwell); Geraldine Brooks (Julie Demarest); Richard Basehart (James Demarest); Jerome Cowan (Senator Caldwell); John Ridgely (Jackson Laidell); Patricia White (Angela); Rory Mallinson (Becket); Helene Thimig (Marta); Paul Stanton (Davenport); Barry Bernard (Roberts).
    Summary: Recently widowed Sandra Demarest arrives at the isolated home of her late husband for his wake, but his uncle Mark Caldwell will not allow her to view the corpse. In a grudging gesture of hospitality Mark allows Sandra to stay at the house, but Sandra and Mark are suspicious of each other. Adding to the mix is Mark’s neurotic niece, who also resides in the house and takes a liking to Sandra. Mysterious happenings and dramatic events gradually ensue.

  [editor's note: minor SPOILERS in the comments below].

    An under-the radar diamond in the rough, Cry Wolf is the only film Barbara Stanwyck and Errol Flynn appeared in together. Flynn and La Stanwyck head a strong cast that includes Helen Thimig, Richard Basehart, Jerome Cowan, a very young Patricia Barry, and, in her first film, Geraldine Brooks. I’d never heard of director Peter Godfrey but he had the noirish touch and keeps the story moving apace. Godfrey is ably assisted by composer Franz Waxman and especially cameraman Carl Guthrie, whose atmospheric cinematography bathes things in a sinister overlay. Borrowing huge swaths of Jane Eyre, Rebecca and even Gaslight, Cry Wolf is pretty much composed of equal parts drawing room melodrama, quasi-noir and old dark house thriller. Flynn is cast against type as the brooding head of a well-to-do New England family and he underplays the role nicely, projecting a combination of Eyre’s Rochester and Rebecca’s Maxim de Winter.

    But this is Stanwyck’s movie all the way. She radiates courage, vulnerably, and just plain, eminently Stanwyckian, bad ass grit and determination, and along the way she manages several athletic and equestrian scenes with equal aplomb. There’s not much romantic spark between her and Flynn [1], and their anti-chemistry actually suits the characters and story rather well. By contrast she shows much more chemistry with ingenue Geraldine Brooks [2].

    Cry Wolf received mixed reviews from critics and was not a big hit at the box office despite its unmistakable star power. One explanation: times, and tastes, were changing, and the Gothic thriller was becoming passé. Another factor was that audiences simply couldn’t accept Errol Flynn as the villain, which he (more or less) is here. Still, the film has aged well. Maybe not a perfect production, and only marginally noir, Cry Wolf nonetheless is expert storytelling served up in old school Golden Age style showcasing two screen legends performing at the peak of their powers. Recommended.

   [1] Information is scarce as to how well Flynn and Stanwyck got along on the set, but I understand there was some friction. An interesting aside: it's been a few years since I've read Flynn's autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways, but I don't recall that he ever mentioned either Stanwyck or Cry Wolf. We shouldn't make too much of Stanwyck's absence, however; there were plenty of films he did and persons he worked with that Flynn didn't include specifically in Wicked Ways.   

   [2] Am I way off the mark or is there a hovering Sapphic undercurrent present in the scenes that Stanwyck and Brooks appear in together? Admittedly I may be guilty of conflating character and actor: i.e. relying too much on gossip I’ve read about Stanwyck’s inclinations, which, to be fair, have never been proved, but on the other hand, have never been disproved either.* Interesting this interpretation, because in the context of the story it’s the Brooks character who seems to have a crush on Stanwyck and not the other way around. Aside: their simpatico relationship onscreen in Cry Wolf is somewhat surprising in view of Brooks' later comments that Stanwyck treated her coldly on the set.
    In any event, the two women’s connection is further underscored by a theme Waxman inserts practically every time they are together. The melodic contour is suspiciously similar to a passage from the ‘Liebesnacht’ from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Was this pure coincidence or perhaps an unconscious tell on the composer’s part? Alas, we’ll never know. By the way, the instrumental colorings and harmonic shadings Waxman employs throughout Cry Wolf have overtones, if you’ll pardon the term, of his score for Rebecca, not altogether inapropos given the two films’ distinctly similar vibe.
    As for the Mark character, I’ve read comments that suggest he’s coded gay. True, he’s unmarried, and there’s no mention of a former wife or current girlfriend. But this take is somewhat undercut by his attempted seduction of Barbara. Somewhat caddishly, he explains to her that his kiss was purely ‘scientific’ in nature, and it all earns him a well deserved slap. Gay or no, Mark's creepy, over-protective attitude towards his flighty sister, portrayed so well by the novice Brooks, borders on the kinky. Only later in the story do we find out he has his reasons.
   Sleazy character that he may be, as the film progresses Barbara seems to be falling for Mark, and when Richard Basehart accuses her of being in love with him, she denies it, half-heartedly, then when he asks her again, she doesn’t deny it. Mark’s feelings for Barbara are more ambiguous; aside from the kiss, he shows no romantic tendencies in her direction. The murky, truncated ending holds out the promise of a romantic future for the two, but it’s hardly a sure thing.
       * An ironic footnote to cinematic history and the Stanwyck oeuvre is that she was one of the first actresses to portray a, albeit somewhat toned down, lesbian character in a mainstream Hollywood film. In Walk on the Wild Side (1962), she plays a brothel madam who has an ‘unnatural’ attachment to her star employee, the enigmatic Capucine.

senators for the ages

         few would deny that the desire to be re-elected exercises a strong brake on
      independent courage
       - John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage


     It’s no revelation to note the dearth of genuine courage in public figures these days, be they elected officials or other high profile individuals. All too often reticence, self-interest (and self- preservation), among other factors, carry the day. It’s all buttressed by a well-connected donor class and compliant mass media, further obfuscated by carefully worded public statements. Apropos then to pay homage to two exceptions, both from the public sphere, who exhibited forthrightness and principle, in a word, courage, sometimes at the expense of their careers and often to the detriment of their party. These are U.S. Senators Robert Taft and Frank Church, both towering figures, alas largely forgotten today by all but hardcore political junkies (though Church may be getting a revival, discussed further below).

     An odd coupling, Church and Taft: despite some similarities in philosophy, the two men were basically cut from different cloths, both politically and personally. They hailed from different regions of the country, and were of different parties, moreover of different generations, though both had a world view shaped by World War II, and later, inevitably, by the Cold War that followed. Church relished in and sought out the political limelight [1], Taft did not, preferring to stay in the background and do what needed to be done. Both alas passed on at the (by today’s standards) youthful ages of sixty-three and fifty-nine respectively.

    Church first entered the senate in 1957, four years after Taft’s death, and there’s no evidence the two men ever met [2]. Further, there’s no hints in the record, either public or private, what Church’s opinion was of Taft. In any case neither was exempt from criticism in their own lifetimes, and there remain naysayers even today. Still, both are highly revered by a wide swath of the political spectrum. Taft entered the pantheon long ago, but Church is more a Johnny-come-lately (incidentally he was considered such for much of his political career, even, especially, by his colleagues in the Senate). But most important, both said what they meant and meant what they said, a quality sorely lacking in public officials today, and both stuck to their guns when convinced their position was just, but neither was averse to modifying a stand or outright changing his mind based on evidence and sound judgement, and not on which way the wind was blowing.

    Chronologically, and perhaps substantively, Taft deserves precedence. He was born into a political family, to say the least. His father was William Howard Taft, who was a President as well as Supreme Court Chief Justice. But Robert Taft had none of the usual political talents: he wasn’t of the old school, back-slapping, glad handing personality, and he was hardly what we’d call a great orator. He cared more about ideas and principles than public relations, and as a result seemed intellectual and overly abstract. By all conventional measures, then, Taft wasn’t a very good politician. In contrast, Church was affable and enjoyed public attention, but could rub people the wrong way with his unbending stands. Taft wasn’t exactly a slouch either on taking controversial stands on divisive issues. His basic political philosophy included a strong quasi-isolationist streak: he was critical of the agreements made at the Teheran and Yalta WW2 conferences. He felt the tendency to carve up Europe was dictated by Realpolitik and not by the spirit of law and justice. He also opposed the U.S. joining NATO and the UN, and was against too many American commitments abroad in the early Cold War. Like Church he objected to the imperialist, militarist trend in American foreign policy in the post-WW2 era, a trend that, by the way, continues to this day.

    But Taft wasn’t a knee jerk libertarian conservative: he supported progressive causes such as social security, public housing, and federal aid to education. Moreover, he was one of the few elected officials who spoke out against the internment of Japanese-Americans in WW2. In these contexts it’s instructive to consider Taft’s comment on liberalism:

    “Liberalism implies particularly freedom of thought, freedom from orthodox dogma, the right of others to think differently from one’s self. It implies a free mind, open to new ideas and willing to give attentive consideration to them … When I say liberty, I mean liberty of the individual to think his own thoughts and live his own life as he desires to think and live.”  [Profiles in Courage, p205].

     And this from a self-described conservative!

     In any case, and for better or worse, Taft’s big moment occurred on Oct 5, 1946, in a speech at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, as part of a three-day symposium on ‘The Heritage and Responsibility of English-Speaking Peoples.’ The topic of Taft’s speech was Anglo-American Law and Justice, a subject dear to his heart. In his speech Taft criticized the Nuremberg war crimes trials that had just taken place. Taft stunned the political world by objecting to the trial, conviction, and execution of 11 prominent Nazis including the number-two Nazi, Hermann Göring, who committed suicide at the last moment to avoid hanging. Taft asserted that the trials were conducted in the spirit of vengeance, and that vengeance can never be justice.

     Legal commentators noted that the trials were an example of the principle of legal positivism, as well as the unrestrained use of judicial power, pointing out that the crimes for which the Nazis were tried had no legal precedent and were not outlawed with the death penalty by the international community, i.e. they were a classic example of ex post facto laws. Moreover, Taft cautioned that the trials would not necessarily discourage countries from waging aggressive war, for no country or group wages a war without the expectation of victory. If world events since 1946 have taught us anything it’s that the so-called Nuremberg Principle has not discouraged countries, individuals and groups from committing aggressive acts, war or otherwise, in pursuit of political or military agendas.

     Be that as it may, JFK recounts in Profiles in Courage that there was a firestorm of protest from all sides of the political and journalistic spectrum as sources savagely criticized the senator for his impolitic stand. One attack was typical: “ … on this issue, as on so many others, Senator Taft shows that he has a wonderful mind which knows practically everything and understands practically nothing.” Take that! [3] However, the passage of time has given us a more nuanced perspective. Taft biographer James T. Patterson writes that “the trials so clearly rested on ‘victor’s justice’ that many experts later conceded the essential correctness of Taft’s position and that Taft’s ‘outspoken view of the trials … revealed the depth of his convictions on crucial issues’.” [Patterson, Mr. Republican, Houghton Mifflin, 1972, p. 328.] It would be misleading, however, to suggest that Taft’s position has been universally vindicated by history. To be sure, a substantial number of historians and non-historians agree with Taft’s views, but conversely a large number disagree and support the Nuremberg Principle.

     In any event, one of the results of the controversy was that Taft did not win the Republican presidential nomination in either 1948 or 1952. Eventually all the huffing and puffing calmed down and Taft’s stature rose to where today he’s considered one of the giants in the history of the Senate [4]. Senate chronicler Allen Drury called Taft one of the Senate’s “strongest and ablest men” and used Taft as the model for the few virtuous lawmakers in his 1959 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Advise and Consent, later made into a much praised motion picture. Not for nothing then was a separate chapter devoted to Taft in Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage. Incidentally, Taft was the most recent of the eight senators included in the book, and the only one Kennedy ever met personally.     

     Frank Church’s brush with fame occurred nearly three decades later, in 1975-76, when he headed the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, which has subsequently been referred to as the Church Committee. The committee investigated abuses and excesses by the CIA, FBI and NSA, all of which since their inception had had very little, if any, oversight by or accountability to Congress.
     One positive result of the committee’s investigations was the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978, which established procedures for the surveillance and collection of foreign intelligence on domestic soil As a result at least some limits were placed on intelligence agencies’ ability to spy on ordinary citizens. There were other reforms as well, such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which would monitor overseas corporate bribery. In other words, the big three intelligence agencies were brought under the rule of law for the first time. Alas, the past half century has revealed that said agencies haven’t been exactly scrupulous in following either the spirit, or the letter, of the law.

     As much as Church’s work on the committee has assured his place in political history, an even greater, albeit much less well-known, moment occurred on February 21, 1968, in a speech on the Senate floor, in which Church specifically criticized American involvement in Vietnam. He also cautioned against the trends of U.S. imperialism and militarism generally, and the ascendancy of a national-security state [5]. Ergo the U.S. was acting more like an empire than a republic. Senator Ernest Gruening of Alaska, a fellow Vietnam skeptic, immediately proclaimed Church’s speech as one of the greatest made on the Senate floor since Daniel Webster. The speech is extensively quoted in Risen’s book and space precludes our inclusion in detail here, but perhaps we might be allowed to reference an especially prescient passage:
   
          “ … in the face of all this, I wish I could express some confidence that, by an act of our  own volition, we might soon commence to alter this country’s foreign policy from one of general, to one of selective, involvement. But I have no such confidence. Like other nations before us that drank deeply from the cup of foreign adventure, we are too enamored with the nobility of our mission to disenthrall ourselves. Besides, powerful vested interests now encrust and sanctify the policy. Were we to wait for the hierarchy of either political party to advocate a change of course, I fear we would wait indefinitely.”

     What is most remarkable about the speech, and this passage in particular, is not its soaring eloquence, but that it could be delivered today, in 2024 over a half century later, and be just as on the money, perhaps more so given recent events and the, frequently misguided, American response to said events. Church cautioned we might wait indefinitely for our leaders to change course, and today, nearly six decades later, it seems we’re still waiting.

     Church did not lack for critics, in his day or even today, but he and the committee he headed remind us of the possibility of abuses and excesses, however (ostensibly) well-intended, by official agencies, and the need for constant vigilance. One of the results of the committee was the mechanism to hold said agencies, especially the CIA, accountable and to restrain such unbridled excesses for which they became infamous. But such an assessment may be too sanguine in light of documented (and perhaps not so documented) abuses. As much as Washington’s spy apparatus came under tighter oversight and control, at least for a time, even a casual perusal of the five decades after the Church committee’s findings will reveal a plethora of “national security” operations carried out against foreign governments and ordinary American citizens.

     Church was once again uncannily prescient as he mused on such dangers in remarks delivered a half century ago:

         “The United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air.… That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything - telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge … That is the abyss from which there is no return.” [6]

    [1] There’s a certain ironic justice at work here: much as Taft commands greater stature historically, Church today is getting more attention by way of James Risen’s recent book The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys – and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy.

    [2] JFK is, perhaps appropriately so, the connecting thread of Robert Taft and Frank Church, in the case of Taft most conspicuously through Profiles in Courage (it’s actually unclear how well Kennedy knew Taft either personally or professionally, as his tenure in the U.S. Senate had been barely six months on when Taft died). In the case of Church the connection to Kennedy is more direct, and better documented, perhaps best recalled in Risen’s above-mentioned book, The Last Honest Man.

   [3] Some would say Kennedy’s deft sidestepping the substance of Taft’s position – i.e. whether he was right or wrong in his criticism of the Nuremberg trials – is typical of JFK’s tendency to evade, equivocate or procrastinate on controversial topics instead of facing them head-on. Fair enough. But if we read between the lines there’s at least some sympathy for the Taft point of view, and besides, to be perfectly technical, JFK chose his ‘profiles in courage’ not necessarily for the wisdom or praiseworthiness of their ideologies or actions, but to acknowledge that they stood up for principles that, although highly unpopular, simply couldn’t be compromised. To wit, Taft was famously touted as being one of the few politicians able to say ‘no’ (even to his friends and supporters), and in JFK’s defense he seemed to have adopted this Taft principle (at least some of the time).

    [4] Indeed, a 1957 Senate committee (incidentally headed by JFK) named Taft as one of America's five greatest senators, along with Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and Robert M. La Follette Sr., and portraits of the "famous five" are displayed in the Senate Reception Room. Taft was the most recent inductee, and, along with La Follette, the only representative from the Twentieth Century.
     Given the proclamation’s more than half century vintage only the most myopic, or cynical, of politics junkies would argue that no worthy names have emerged post 1957, and sure enough, in 2004, Arthur H. Vandenberg (Michigan) and Robert F. Wagner (New York) were added. In 2006, a mural commemorating the Connecticut Compromise (also known as the Great Compromise of 1787) was added with Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, resulting in the group's informal name becoming the "famous nine." There’s certain injustice (or is it justice?) that none of the four additions were active in the senate post 1957.

   [5] The full text of the admittedly long winded speech, titled ‘The Torment in the Land,’ can be found in the Senate Congressional Record, Wed. Feb 21, 1968.

   [6] NBC Meet the Press, August 17, 1975.

Carib-noir: Black Moon (1934)

      Black Moon [videorecording (DVD)]; a Columbia production; Columbia Pictures Corporation presents; screenplay by Wells Root, based story written by Clements Ripley; directed by Roy William Neill; cinematography by Joseph H. August; edited by Richard Cahoon. Culver City, Calif.: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2011. Originally released as a motion picture in 1934. Performers: Jack Holt; Fay Wray; Dorothy Burgess; Cora Sue Collins; Arnold Korff.   
     Summary: a young girl who lives on a tropical island loses her parents to a voodoo sacrifice, but although she manages to escape the island, a curse is put on her. Years later, as an adult, she feels a strong compulsion to return to the island to confront her past. Her husband, her daughter and her nanny go with her, but once back on the island, the woman finds herself elevated by the locals to the stature of a voodoo goddess, and she begins her inevitable descent into madness, with disastrous results for her family.

    [Minor SPOILERS in comments below]. Black Moon is a little-remembered pre-Code gem that I recently stumbled upon at the public library. I’d just seen King Kong again and wanted to watch more movies with Fay Wray. Happily my library had a copy of Black Moon. Even better, the library also had Mystery of the Wax Museum, in which Miss Wray does some screaming that gives even her famous shrieks in Kong a run for their money.

    But getting back to Black Moon, it sounded interesting and I snapped it up right away. I wasn’t disappointed, though I must admit that Miss Wray, while she looks beautiful and turns in a competent performance, doesn’t register so much because the character she plays isn’t very interesting and furthermore doesn’t have that much to do. The real revelation is Dorothy Burgess as our ill-fated heroine. She was apparently a big deal in the early Thirties but her star faded quickly in the latter part of the decade. She died of lung cancer in 1961 at the youthful age of 54, largely forgotten. The character she plays is a well-bred sort with a decidedly Brit air [1] who secretly harbors an ambition to return to the island and become a voodoo high priestess. I suspect she enjoyed playing the bad girl, and performing a scandalous dance at that! Miss Burgess’s nuanced performance is all the more impressive when we consider that she was the ripe old age of twenty-seven. Did people really grow up faster in them days? In any event I predict that Black Moon is the role for which she’ll be remembered, if she's remembered at all.

    Of course the most notorious scene in Black Moon is Miss Burgess’s voodoo high priestess dance followed by ritual sacrifice [2]. She performs said dance scantily clad and with considerable verve, and for me the similarity here is not to the better-known I Walked with a Zombie (which has its own, more subdued, voodoo ritual dance scene), but Maria Montez’s infamous cobra dance in Cobra Woman. Miss Montez’s interpretation is doubtless campier (her over-the-top costume helps) but Miss Burgess is sexier. Alas, the scene breezes by all to quickly – even in the pre-Code years the studios could only push the envelope so far [3]. 

    You could say Black Moon rode the crest of popularity of voodoo/zombie movies that were popular in the 1930s and 1940s. Comparisons with the better-known I Walked with a Zombie from nearly a decade later are inevitable, and Black Moon holds its own pretty well, even considering the, alas, racist portrayals of the islanders. My DVD copy was very clean and brings out the film's superior production values. My only mild criticism is the lack of bonus features or commentary, especially regrettable given the film's historical pedigree and offbeat content. Still, Black Moon gives us lots of atmosphere and intelligent story delivered in a lean 68 minutes. Recommended. 

[1] Her quasi-Brit vibe in Black Moon belies her American through-and-through bonafides: born in Los Angeles to a theatrical family, she worked in film and theater in the U.S., and as far as I can tell, never traveled outside the States.

[2] Although the penultimate scene in which there's a (near)sacrifice, followed by a real one, of a sort, is pretty shocking too.

[3] Speaking of pushing the envelope: for the ultimate in snake dance risqué try Marika Rökk's 'Schlangentanz' from Kora Terry (available for viewing on YouTube). This exotic dance routine is pretty outrageous even by today's standards, and more so considering the era, when all German cinema was under the purview of the strait-laced National Socialist regime.